


Green Light, Go

by calico_fiction



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Bondage, Compulsory Heterosexuality, Crossdressing, Denial of Feelings, Dom/sub, Established Shane Madej/Sara Rubin, F/M, Kink Discovery, Kink Negotiation, M/M, Multi, Oral Sex, Pegging, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Spanking, Timeline What Timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:14:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26359285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calico_fiction/pseuds/calico_fiction
Summary: It's less momentous, figuring out that he's into men too, than Shane would have expected if he'd ever thought it could happen to him. It's no revelation or epiphany. It's just Ryan.
Relationships: Ryan Bergara/Shane Madej, Ryan Bergara/Shane Madej/Sara Rubin, Shane Madej/Sara Rubin
Comments: 17
Kudos: 110





	Green Light, Go

**Author's Note:**

> SOMEWHAT SPOILERY WARNING BELOW
> 
> To Shane's perception he does engage in emotional infidelity before the polyamory is negotiated, because he doesn't know that polyamory is an option. It's hinted previously that Sara is down with polyamory all along, but the fic is from Shane's POV so the narrative reflects his perception. I didn't want to tag for infidelity because no actual cheating occurs, but Shane's negative thoughts could be triggering or squicky for some so proceed accordingly.

Shane really thought he was straight. He really, really did. And the thing about thinking you're straight, right, is that the way things are set up kind of lends itself to you never questioning it. Never questioning anything, in fact. So as a man who thinks he's straight and has an easygoing long term relationship with one woman, Shane has sex like he's straight too. He thinks about sex and love like he's straight. Everything is clear-cut, has few steps and iterations, and it's all just done the way it's done, and that's that. It's not that he's prudish or inexperienced, he's not either. It's just that he's never quite had the tip-off to get creative. Tough to find interesting new answers when you don't even know there are questions.

All that to say: the kinkiest Shane has ever really gotten is to do it with the lights on, or on the couch, or to let his partner sit on his face if she wants. Maybe a little gentle hair tugging here and there, a few light scratches down his back, the occasional sext. Doggie style, once.

Sara has a few fresh and funky things that she likes that Shane is perfectly happy to do for her, to her, to let her do to him. She likes to cover him in hickeys all over, and she likes for him to manhandle her and hold her a little too tight, and she likes to take pictures of him right after he's come. And that stuff was a little bit like a sexy knock over the head at first, but it never really pushed the boundaries of what sex is like in Shane's head.

Enter one Ryan Bergara.

It's less momentous, figuring out that he's into men too, than Shane would have expected if he'd ever thought it could happen to him. Less momentous than he's always assumed it must have been like for the people he knows who have had similar realizations at some point in their lives. It's no revelation or epiphany. It's just Ryan. Just Ryan in a pink shirt, and that's all. It's not even a new shirt.

They're on the set of Unsolved, filming for a True Crime episode, and Ryan is describing a horrific murder and Shane is making deeply morbid quips, and when Ryan laughs for him he laughs with his whole body and his shirt moves and catches Shane's eye and makes Shane  _ look. _ Shane looks at the way the shirt hugs over Ryan's chest and bunches up at his hips because he's sitting, looks at the pastel color against Ryan's tan skin, looks at the sleeve tight around Ryan's bicep, looks at the way light and shadow play on Ryan's collarbones because he has the first two buttons undone, looks at the strong column of his throat, at the dark stubble along his jaw.

Shane looks, and for some unknown reason he finally notices the way he feels while he's at it. His hands are warm and empty, and so is his mouth, and they'd be warmer and less empty if he put them on Ryan. Time pauses, just for a moment, just long enough for Shane to think  _ Oh. _ And then the moment passes and everything is normal and the only thing that's changed is Shane.

Shane isn't sure if he's supposed to or not, but that's never really factored into his personal decisions before, so the first thing he does about it is tell Sara. She laughs at him.

"Sorry," she says. "I know it's not funny but, like, it's kind of funny." It is, Shane can admit, kind of funny. Here he is in his thirties only just now awakening to the fact that he's attracted to the same sex because his best friend wore something flattering. So he laughs at himself too.

After that it's like the floodgates open. Shane finds his gaze snagging on some guy's thighs as they pass each other on the sidewalk, his Lyft driver's veiny hands on the steering wheel, Oscar Isaac in that orange jumpsuit, and Ryan.

And here's where it starts. Shane lets himself feel the want, but it's all vague and frustrating because his frame of reference, it turns out, is sorely limited. He looks and he wants, but he doesn't know  _ what  _ (or how or why or what it would be like if he had it). His wanting bumps up against the matrix-glitch blankness in his mind where he never thought any further. He wants it to be irrelevant, because he's with Sara and he doesn't plan on that ever changing, but it  _ isn't  _ and it's like a bruise in the back of his mind - annoying and tender to the touch.

All the things Shane has never tried, and all the things he'd subconsciously taken for granted, each and every one a mental boo-boo that he picks at looking for a reason why only to discover that there isn't one. All his ideas about sex and romance and even the process of growing up and knowing yourself shift slightly to the left. Now there's an endless wilderness of questions to explore, and maybe somewhere out there the treasure box of answers. For Shane, it turns out, the word 'queer' is his cryptic list of clues to himself, his reminder that the search itself has an equal value to what's inside the box. That big broad horizon, stretching out to the vanishing point, ready and waiting for Shane to experience it fraction by fraction.

The first fraction of that broadened horizon that Shane decides to explore is porn. Porn is easy and accessible and can be exed out of in a split second if necessary. The only problem being, of course, that porn can't tell you what things  _ feel  _ like (though it does certainly make those things look good).

The second fraction Shane decides to explore is butt stuff. He knows butt stuff is not a gays-only activity, but even still he simply had never applied the possibility to himself. Shane might never know what it feels like to kiss a man or be held by one, but he can at least discover what it feels like for his partner to fuck him. So he asks Sara if she's interested in pegging him.

"Oh,  _ fuck  _ yeah," she says. Shane blinks, blushes.

"Oh," he says. "You, uh- Did you…?" Sara shrugs, understanding his half sentences easily after so long together.

"Yeah, I thought about it, I guess, but it's not, like, a  _ thing, _ you know?" she explains. Shane nods like he does know, but he doesn't really, and that's kind of his whole situation. Shane doesn't have a  _ thing _ and he suddenly has reason to wonder if maybe that's just because he hasn't figured out what it is yet.

She fingers him that night, and it's weird and confusing and  _ so good, _ and she praises him giddily as he pants in the afterglow, her instax camera spitting M rated polaroids all over the sheets.

Shane keeps making his way across the horizon, occasionally taking Sara along on the adventure. Most of the miles he logs are of the examining-his-implicit-biases nature. Those are not necessarily fun, but they are deeply freeing and Shane can feel himself becoming a more content person the farther he travels away from the normative mindset.

Part of being a more content person, though, is having better sex. Even when they aren't doing something different,  _ Shane  _ is different. Or at least he  _ feels  _ different, and that makes everything else feel different too.

Anyway, he has her let him in on some other stuff she's thought about but was never enough of a  _ thing  _ for her to bring up with him before, out of curiosity and eagerness to pin down his own boundaries. She paints on him, eats off of him, has him squeeze her wrists together in one hand, blindfold her, fuck her on the kitchen counter. After they get around to actually buying a strap-on, she fucks him as often as he fucks her. It's all great fun and, like with anything else, Shane is excited to learn.

Shane isn't expecting it for Ryan to teach him a little something, again. It's like lightning striking twice, he thinks.

The two of them are one of the pairs in yet another click-baity video short, titled  _ Straight Men Try Following This Ten Step Makeup Tutorial _ . Shane hasn't felt the need to bring his semi-shitty employer into the fold re: his sexuality. He hasn't even told Ryan yet, and it's Sara first and Ryan second and then maybe his parents, or maybe not, and it's nobody else's business. Besides which, Shane still fits the goal of the video casting in that he's only ever worn makeup for other Buzzfeed videos. Plus Ryan wants to do it, and they never put one of them in a video without the other anymore.

Regardless, it turns out that Shane is actually kind of good at applying makeup to himself. Or at least he's good at following the tutorial. He looks at himself in the round mirror provided for him when he's finished. He looks baby smooth and slightly flushed and his eyes look bigger and brighter and his lips shine and sparkle.

"Alright, let's show off our Looks, react to each other," the director says, and Shane obediently turns so that Ryan can see his whole face.

"Wow!" Ryan exclaims. "You look really pretty!" And Shane- Shane's body…  _ reacts, _ to that. To Ryan saying that. It's- It doesn't feel like arousal, per se, or at least not the way Shane has ever felt it before. It's a hot flash, Shane suddenly too-warm from head to toe. And (and this is how Shane knows this weird feeling must be at least some level of sex-related) he wants Ryan to touch him so bad. He wants Ryan to run his hands through Shane's hair, and say it again. Kiss him, come away with Shane's lipstick smeared on his mouth, and say it again.  _ Fuck, _ he wants Ryan to say it again.

"Yeah?" he croaks. "You think so?" Ryan has makeup on too but Shane is hardly paying attention, far more captivated by whatever expression he might find on Ryan's face than the products there. It's just Ryan's normal face, underneath the glitter and foundation, just the same open-mouthed grin Shane always gets for every joke. Nothing special.

"Yeah, man," Ryan confirms blithely. "Now all you need's a dress." (Shane wants Ryan to push his hands up Shane's thighs under his skirt, and say it again.)

Shane is a little light in the head, still shivery-hot, when he takes a selfie and sends it to Sara.

_ now all i need is a dress, _ he texts.

That weekend Sara makes him up herself, breaking out the darker lipsticks she rarely uses because she says she wants to see him in purple. The makeup is silky smooth and soft on his skin and smells sweet, makes him feel soft and sweet.

"Look at you," Sara breathes, and holds up a mirror for him so he can do just that. "Pretty boy," she adds, and it's a compliment, and Shane shivers. She paints his nails too, and when she fucks him he has to keep his hands still and flat so he doesn't smear the polish while it dries. Shane takes the face off when they're finished but leaves his nails done, a glittery dark blue.

"Next time," Sara promises as Shane snuggles up to her in bed for a post-coital nap, "we'll put you in a dress too." Shane buries his bashful grin in her shoulder, and falls asleep before it fades.

Shane floats around on the cloud nine promise of  _ next time _ for days. People at work notice, ask him what's got him in such a good mood, but Shane just smiles enigmatically until they go back to minding their business. Ryan wonders too, and Shane thinks really hard about telling him, thinks really hard about Coming Out™ but something unidentifiable chokes him quiet.

"Just having a good week," he says instead. Ryan cocks his head curiously, knowing that's not all, but he doesn't push Shane to give a better answer. Relief mixed with guilt feels a little bit like indigestion, but thankfully a sappy exchange of texts with your girlfriend works as well as a shot of pepto.

Shane and Sara are getting hot and heavy in the hallway to the bedroom when Shane's cloud turns into rain. He's holding her up against the wall just in front of the bedroom door. She's tiny enough that he can do it even with noodle arms and a core about as firm as pressed tofu. And it hits him like a downpour right over his head and stops him in his tracks.

"I can't-" he blurts, pulling his mouth away from Sara's neck where he had been returning a love bite. "I can't fit into any of your clothes." The realization sinks like an ice cold stone into Shane's gut. He feels weighed down with it. He feels- fuck, he feels  _ bereaved _ . He lost something he only knew he wanted for a moment, but damn if it doesn't feel like it took a little chunk out of him when it went. He- he might  _ cry _ .

"Shane, baby," Sara whispers to him like she's giving him some powerful secret. "We can buy you your own."

_ Duh. _ Shane feels like a fucking idiot for not thinking of that himself, but. It is a powerful secret, actually. That he can wear whatever clothes he wants, for whatever reasons or no reason at all. That he doesn't have to be doing it for a bit or an experiment or a favor. That he can want it just for himself, and buy clothes that have no other purpose but to be worn by him and him alone. Just the same as the powerful secret that he can be attracted to men, even approaching middle age and committed to a woman.

Even Sara's negligible weight is too much for Shane after that emotional whiplash. He collapses onto the floor with her. She rearranges herself into a more sustainable position on his lap and folds him down to rest his forehead on her shoulder. He breathes to the rhythm of her petting through his hair until he feels like a rational adult person again.

The both of them email that they're working from home a few days later and then slack off after their meetings have all been attended so that they can go shopping during the work day when there will be fewer potential spectators. It takes frustratingly many hours to find anything that (sorta) fits Shane. Eventually, with Sara's help, Shane decides on a pale green sundress. It falls just above his knees and has a sweetheart neckline, an elastic back, and adjustable spaghetti straps.

Shane puts the dress on again as soon as they get back home, showing Sara like she wasn't there when he tried it on and bought it.

"Pretty," Sara calls him when he does a little twirl for her in the kitchen where the light is best, and then when he perches on the counter and lets her pull his legs apart, "Easy." Shane's body reacts for him like before, flooding him with heat, bashfulness and arousal all mixed up into one burning wave. His head falls back against the cabinet behind him with a thud, back arching slightly. Sara hums in approval.

"You wanna show me your tits, huh, baby?" she says, and Shane whines. "Yeah, I thought so." She slides her hands all the way up Shane's bare thighs, and he spreads them wide for her on reflex. But she bypasses his dick and ass both and instead gets her hands on top of the dress again to continue feeling him up over his sides, up to his shoulders. There, she slides the thin straps of the dress down around Shane's arms and tugs the neckline down with them to just below Shane's nipples. And Shane doesn't have boobs, they're just pretending, right? But he still feels exposed. Sara is staring blatantly at his bare chest, biting her lip lecherously. Shane wants to cover himself with his hands and at the same time he also wants Sara to touch him. To cup his flat chest as much as she can, squeeze and massage palmfuls of him in her hands, brush her thumbs teasingly over his nipples until he has fully forgotten the very idea of modesty.

Like she read his mind, Sara does just that. And then later, in bed on her phone, after a quick photoshoot of a thoroughly debauched Shane spilled across the kitchen floor, she visits a specialty store she mysteriously already had bookmarked and buys him some heels and lingerie.

Weeks later, Ryan implies that he'd like to see Shane in a dress, but he doesn't mean it that way so Shane pretends he didn't hear it that way either. He thinks really hard about telling, but he doesn't.

Life and the season goes on. Abandoned prisons and asylums continue to not be haunted. Ryan continues to reach life-altering levels of attractiveness. He just hits Shane's buttons, dead-on, without even trying, when Shane doesn't even know where all his buttons  _ are _ and therefore can't put mental plexiglass boxes around them to keep them from getting pressed at inappropriate times.

It's on location the next time it happens, which is bad and no good and terrible.

Ryan is scared-manic and Shane is tired-ornery and it's a perfect storm sort of combination. It's gotta be past three in the morning and Ryan had only just called cut a bare few minutes ago, and Shane has got it into his head to annoy him for revenge.

"I'm not touching you," he sing-songs dully, hovering his finger around and around in the air next to Ryan's face. It's juvenile and stupid, but Shane is feeling juvenile and stupid from lack of sleep anyway. Besides which, they're in each other's pockets like usual and it just seems like the least possible amount of effort to lift one hand just that scant bit further into Ryan's space. (And if, in the very back of his head, Shane may or may not be hoping that by some short cascade of coincidences he  _ does  _ touch Ryan, that's between Shane and his growing list of other secrets.)

"If you don't quit it," Ryan threatens, turning his head so that his eyes cross looking at Shane's finger. "I'm gonna murder you and then you're going to become a ghost. Two birds, one stone." Shane doesn't say anything more, but he doesn't stop turning his finger around and around and around Ryan's nose.

It doesn't take long before Ryan snaps. With a scream of disproportionate rage muffled through gritted teeth, Ryan springs into sudden unavoidable action. He grabs Shane's wrist, spins him around, and grabs the other one too. He manhandles Shane's arms crossed behind his back so that Ryan can get a grip around both of Shane's forearms in each hand. Then he frogmarches Shane over to his sleeping bag. Somehow, Shane ends up face-down on it with half of Ryan's weight pressing down on top of him, his arms still in Ryan's hold. Ryan squeezes briefly in warning, and then gets up.

It takes a moment for Shane to process what just happened, and when he does he gets sprung so fast it takes his breath away. He stays frozen right where Ryan put him, half because he doesn't want Ryan to see that he's hard about it, and half because- Because… Well, just because.

"Uh. Shane?" Ryan asks after a pause. He'd rolled out and unzipped his own sleeping bag, by the sound of it, before noticing that Shane hadn't moved.

"Mpf," says Shane, to let Ryan know he heard him.

"Did I hurt you?" His voice is small and worried, already guilty. Shane sighs hugely, and (reluctantly) shifts to face Ryan with his head pillowed on his arms.

"No, buddy, you didn't hurt me," he soothes honestly. "Just took me by surprise."

"Oh," Ryan says. He barks out a for-the-cameras laugh, even though the camera isn't on. "Well, now you know what you get if you cross me." Shane laughs too. For the camera.

"Wouldn't want that," he says through a perfect Hollywood grin.

Shane isn't quite brave enough to bring this one up with Sara directly. He keeps telling himself he's not totally sure if he really, definitely wants it despite that the idea came from his real-life reaction, because it's scary. So instead of saying it out loud, Shane accidentally-on-purpose gets caught watching porn.

On the screen, a man is tied up in fancy knots with fancy rope. It's criss-crossed along the subtle lines of his musculature and holds his arms behind his back with palms together. There's a woman in shiny leather walking around him in circles, running her long acrylic nails along his bare skin or pulling his hair. She's degrading him too, but Shane has it muted and captions off. He hadn't liked that. It's just the bondage that he's interested in. Shane can see the vague reflection of Sara over his shoulder on the screen, but he pretends he can't until she clears her throat. Even though he knew she was there, he doesn't have to fake the way he jumps and snaps his laptop shut in embarrassment.

"Something you wanna talk about, babe?" Sara asks, gently teasing. Shane just shrugs, his face burning hot. "Okay," she accepts easily, and then pauses so she can close the short distance between them and press a comforting kiss against his lips. "Well, let me know if and/or when. I don't know how to tie those fancy knots, so I wanna watch a few tutorials first."

It's easier after that, knowing that Sara is so casually willing, to ask. They settle together at their kitchen table to discuss it.

"We'll use the stoplight system if you're okay with that," Sara decides. "Green for go, yellow for slow down, red for stop. It's really easy that way."

"Wh- uh. Is-?" Shane stutters, meaningless syllables that only serve to illustrate further how nervous he is. "Do we- I mean. Why?" Sara smiles, her love for him showing so obviously in her eyes just like it always does no matter what fake-mean or farcical shit is coming out of her mouth, familiar and comforting. Shane can feel himself loosening up a little bit at the sight.

"It's so that you can still whine and complain without calling it quits," Sara explains, half facetious.

"Oh, well," Shane huffs, and he finds - like he has with everything else in this arena so far - once his eyes are opened to it, it makes perfect sense and suddenly the question is why he hadn't seen it that way all along. "I do love to whine and complain."

It takes them a good long while to work up to it. Sara does watch tutorials on tying fancy bondage knots. She buys the fancy rope too, braided and thick like the regular stuff but luxuriously soft against Shane's skin. Shane is still a little scared of it, and he does indeed whine and complain, but his stoplight stays green the whole way.

If Shane thought for a moment that he only had those two or three  _ things, _ Ryan doesn't take long to disabuse him of that notion.

It's the beginning of a brand new season of Unsolved, back to True Crime now. Ryan's stupid manila folder actually has more than a couple pages in it today, and he's working his way through it all with a single-minded fervor. Theory one passes without fanfare. It's simple, boring, likely. Number two, though, number two Ryan is enthusiastic about.

"Say it," he demands after he's finished detailing through the theory and all its evidence. " _ Say _ it." Shane frowns mightily, acting more reluctant than he really is for the camera.

"It's a compelling argument," he admits. Ryan lights up in the eyes but his grin is all teeth, and Shane is thinking- oh boy, is he  _ thinking, _ before Ryan even says anything else, because Ryan has blown all of Shane's delusions of straightness and now narrowhood right out of Shane's head-

"Good boy," Ryan purrs, just this side of degrading - two parts condescending and smug, plus one part genuine praise to make it special. To make it  _ effective _ . And somehow Shane still manages to be taken by surprise. There's that little jolt in his gut, that  _ zing _ of unexpected lust that comes with the sudden realization that something is sexy, actually. It's infuriating how familiar that feeling is to Shane now. He thought he'd left it far behind by the time he'd hit his fifteenth birthday. But ever since Ryan in his stupid pink shirt pulled back that first curtain it's like Shane is back there all over again, horny and unsure of himself and not fully aware of what his body is getting up to at any given moment.

When Shane brings it up to Sara this time, it's in the form of an impassioned rant.

"Have you considered maybe Ryan isn't supernaturally sexy and actually you just have a crush on him?" Sara asks mildly, interrupting Shane right when he really gets going.

"No. Preposterous." That's Shane's story and he's sticking to it.

He  _ can't  _ have a crush on Ryan, is the thing. He can't have a crush on Ryan because he has a crush on  _ Sara. _ He's  _ in love _ with Sara, in fact. He's in love with Sara and he wants to be with her for a very, very long time, maybe even for the rest of his life. It's okay to think Ryan's hot; that's just an objective truth. But Shane's not a cheater.

"Okay, baby," says Sara. She sounds like she's giving him something, her voice gentle around the pet name, but Shane can't imagine what. "Finish complaining, but after that do you wanna talk about trying power play with me?"

"Yeah, alright," Shane sighs, all bluster.

They do talk about it, and they do a little bit of research together, and they watch a little bit of porn together, and they talk about it again a few more times. It takes them a little while to get around to it, both of them nervous this time, and not to mention as busy as always. But eventually a long weekend comes around and they have the time to plan, and the time to  _ do. _

Sara has Shane kneel for her, and bow to her, and ask her permission to taste her. He minds his manners very sweetly,  _ please  _ before and  _ thank you _ after, and even when she pulls his hair and makes his hips jerk he doesn't let his tongue falter. She kisses herself off of his lips after she finishes, and then she has him carry her bridal style into the bedroom, undresses him herself like she's unwrapping a present. She directs him with gentle touches to sit up against the headboard, and when she rides him he's not allowed to use his hands. He comes so hard he forgets his own name for a moment. When he makes it back to earth he babbles praise and gratitude breathlessly, helplessly, until Sara is blushing so bright she glows in the dim of their bedroom.

It takes a good long while before it happens again. Shane lets himself fall into a false sense of security. Perhaps he jinxes himself, thinking it's over. He's figured out his  _ thing  _ and Ryan has no power over him. Sure, he notices when Ryan's jeans fit him particularly well. And yeah, that pink shirt still catches his eye. And okay, maybe he watches Ryan's mouth when he talks, and stares at his hands curled around coffee cups, and appreciates his cologne a little more than just in passing. But that's just normal, little things. A general attraction. Nothing earth-shattering.

(And when Shane feels wistful and heartsick over cheap beers and the finished paperwork to incorporate, late at night in Ryan's kitchen with Ryan listing exhaustedly into Shane's side- That's not anything important either. He's just tired, and he's going home to Sara as soon as Ryan rights himself.)

Steven moves back to L.A. from the Big Apple, and after they spent so long so far apart for a short while he monopolizes Ryan's free time. All that quality one-on-one time with Steven affects how Ryan is elsewhen, gets him back in touch with his sporty bro roots.

Such as it is that when Shane announces that the Watcher channel has reached a thousand subscribers, and he happens to be leaning over his desk because he'd been watching the number tick higher, and Ryan happens to be standing behind him, instead of a high five or a pat on the back or maybe even a hug or something,  _ anything  _ else, Ryan gives Shane a celebratory smack on the ass.

Shane shoots up into standing ramrod straight, staring forward blankly and wide-eyed. The hit stung a little but not much through his chinos, more a shock than anything. But - and maybe it's just in his head - Shane swears he can still feel the perfect outline of Ryan's hand on his cheek, warm and tingling.

"Oh, shit," Ryan swears. "Sorry, dude, locker room reflex-"

"It's fine," Shane assures, but his voice is strangled something awful and it definitely sounds like it's not fine at all.

"Okay," Ryan says doubtfully, and Shane knows he'll never do it again. But it's too late.

If Shane had thought Ryan's hands were something to look at before, that's nothing compared to what they're like now. Around his coffee cups, sure. But also when he's typing, or stapling. Adjusting the boom mic or pointing where he wants a prop set up. Beating out a little drumline on his thighs - oh,  _ man. _ And it's definitely all in his head now, but Shane looks at Ryan's hands and there's the unsatisfying phantom of one of them on his ass. Where once Shane looked at Ryan and wanted to put his hands on him, now he looks and wants Ryan's hands on him. And none too gentle, if you please.

It's another scary one. Shane has never been spanked in his life, not ever. His parents didn't believe in corporal punishment of any kind, and besides that he was a pretty well-behaved kid regardless. Once again, Shane has no earthly clue what this thing that he wants actually feels like (excepting, of course, that one split-second, barely-there little smack that got him on the topic).

Despite that, it doesn't take him as long to bring it up with Sara as bondage did, mainly because Shane can't get it out of his head for the life of him. Every day Ryan mercilessly taunts him by having hands and Shane feels like climbing the walls. But Sara shakes her head.

"Impact is not for me," she says firmly, and that's that.

But Shane still can't stop thinking about it. It feels wrong, disrespectful, to fantasize about Sara spanking him when he knows she doesn't want to. So he doesn't do that. Every now and then he caves and watches some porn, but that's mostly just frustrating. As with butt stuff, porn simply can't answer the question that plagues him.

The number of times per day that Shane leans over his desk instead of sitting down rises from an average of zero to more than that. It's entirely subconscious, and as soon as he notices he's doing it he stops, every time.

Shane's not a cheater, and this isn't a dealbreaker. He can live without it. He just needs to get a grip and get over not knowing.

Sometimes Shane is in the mood to get off, but not in the mood for partnered sex. This is a normal part of human sexuality. Just as people need the occassional alone time with their hobbies, they also need the occasional alone time with sex (if sex is something they're into). On one such occasion, Shane decides on an ill-advised whim to think about spanking. He won't think about Sara, because she's not into it, so he thinks about porn instead and tries to insert himself into it. No-faced nobodies, no harm.

The video went like this: A younger man in a deliberately ill-fitting schoolboy uniform and fake glasses sits in a red plastic chair. An older man, silver fox, wears a sharp suit and sits behind a heavy desk and levels the other with an exaggerated glare of disappointment.

"I don't know how to get through to you, Tommy," growls the silver fox. There's more dialogue but it's irrelevant, an obligatory means to the end. The end being Tommy face-down over the fox's lap with his shorts pulled down under his ass. The fox spanks him until he cries, big fat crocodile tears, and he promises that he'll be a good boy. The fox splays him out on top of the desk and sucks him off for taking his punishment so well, and then jerks off on his stomach.

In Shane's imagination it goes like this: Shane in his normal semi-casual clothes and his very real glasses sits in his comfy office chair.

"You're such a pain in my ass, Madej," growls a no-faced nobody with really nice hands. There isn't any more dialogue because it's irrelevant, unnecessary outside of a production. So Shane ends up face-down over Nobody's lap without logical transition. Nobody pulls Shane's pants down under his ass. He doesn't get right to spanking though. First, he just feels Shane up. He rubs and squeezes Shane's cheeks, and-

"Guess you're not as much of a stick figure as I thought," says Ryan. "Lucky me." Ryan brings one of his really nice hands down hard on Shane's bare ass, and the other one holds Shane still with a firm press between his shoulders. There's the satisfying crack of impact, and the pain of it is hot and sharp and all too brief. Ryan spanks Shane until Shane gets close. Then he lifts Shane up with ease and lays him out over Shane's own desk. He sucks Shane off, and Shane comes, and the fantasy pops like a bubble.

Shane has never felt like a bigger piece of shit in his life.

But hey! At least he can be certain he won't think about getting spanked again any time soon.

Shane doesn't tell Sara about his fantasy, feels like an asshole about it, and rationalizes by insisting to himself that it doesn't matter because it's never going to happen again. He avoids Ryan at work for a little while, but that can only last so long before it's remarked upon so he has to quit for the sake of that not happening.

No one notices anything and everything is normal and fine, and that's a lie that Shane tells himself until it eventually comes true.

Shane and Ryan film  _ Weird And/Or Wonderful World _ and  _ Tourist Trapped, _ and those shoots feel a little bit like dates, but it's okay because Shane goes home to Sara and tells her every last detail and she hangs on his words like he's narrating a bestselling thriller rather than his goofy workday. She always asks if he had fun, and when he says yes she kisses him slow and sweet like it's a reward for doing something he wanted to. He really doesn't get her sometimes but he loves her so much, and he tells her so, and she laughs.

The first full season of  _ Homemade  _ is set to film and air next, and by pure coincidence Unsolved is on hiatus at the same time, so Shane and Ryan are left with a little bit more down time than either one of them is used to. Ryan doesn't seem to know what to do with himself and keeps asking to hang out with Shane and Sara. Shane leaves it up to Sara to tell Ryan no if she gets tired of him. He knows by now that he never will.

They go to places that could easily have featured on  _ WWW  _ or  _ TT, _ the three of them. Dates, but also not. And if Shane's other hand feels so, so fucking empty when one is holding Sara's, he has enough respect for her to ignore it.

The  _ Homemade  _ season finale has just aired, and Shane and Ryan are waiting for Steven in the hallway outside the Breather office so they can take him out for drinks to celebrate when Ryan nudges Shane's world on its axis one more time. Steven had said he'd be right out, but once he gets talking it's hard to get him to stop. They both know they have a few more minutes to wait.

"Hey, would you ever-" Ryan blurts suddenly, his voice too loud in the quiet of the empty-but-for-them hall. "I mean, have you ever thought about…" He trails off, and when Shane peers down at him curiously he studiously avoids eye contact.

"Would I ever what?" Shane prompts. The only kind of mystery he can leave alone it seems is the kind with murder.

"Nevermind," Ryan mutters. "It's none of my business."

"Ryan, you're my best friend," Shane says softly. "If it's anyone's business it's yours." It's only halfway a lie, Shane thinks guiltily. He's still not Out to Ryan after all, but he'll tell him eventually. Once it doesn't have anything to do with Ryan anymore, the second it won't hurt, then Shane will tell him.

Ryan doesn't answer for a long, drawn-out moment. He chews on his bottom lip and shoots a beseeching look at the office door, no doubt hoping Steven will pick this exact moment to come through. But the door stays firmly shut, no convenient interruption to be had. So Ryan, ever courageous, closes his eyes and takes a deep, fortifying breath.

"Have you ever," he asks, every word careful and deliberate, "considered polyamory?"

Shane's breath catches in his throat and his heart skips a beat. He hadn't, he absolutely hadn't, but now he is. He is and he- Well, he'll have to ask Sara of course, and if she says no obviously, but- Maybe. Maybe he could- they could- And Shane has no idea what his face is doing right now, but Ryan looks like he thinks the axe is gonna come down on his neck any second. Shane opens his mouth, first to gasp, and then to say  _ maybe  _ and  _ I hope so- _

So of course, it's right  _ then  _ that Steven comes tumbling semi-gracefully out the office door and puts himself in between them. He's giddy, warm, and oblivious with the joy of success. Ryan flinches, and shrinks, and eventually he goes home early.

"So," Shane says to Sara over a lazy Sunday breakfast in bed, after an excruciatingly long few days of working up the nerve. He's nervous and guilty still, but hopeful ( _ maybe, _ he thinks, begs whatever powers might or might not be,  _ maybe maybe maybe). _ "Uh, remember that time you joked that I have a crush on Ryan?"

"I wasn't joking, but go on," Sara says, not bothering to put down the newspaper crossword puzzle that she's fitting her own words into. She does look up when Shane's breath whooshes out of him like he's been pushed right over and been winded by the landing.

"You weren't joking," he hears himself repeat as if from far away. The guilt is slowly being drowned out by more and more hope,  _ maybe-maybe-maybe _ knocking around in his head so that it's hard to think anything else. Sara shakes her head, folds the newspaper, sets it to the side.

"Something you wanna talk about?" she asks, teasing again but so much gentler this time, leading him with the softest possible touch.

"I have a crush on Ryan," Shane finally, finally admits. Sara just nods, like it's just a matter of course, and the relief makes Shane feel so light he must have hollow bones; he could fly. "I want- Do you- Could- Would, uh-" Shane stutters messily for a few moments, but eventually he just parrots what Ryan said, with the same careful, measured tone and all: "Have you ever considered polyamory?"

"Yeah, for sure." Sara doesn't make Shane wait the way Shane made - is making - Ryan. "I've had a couple of polyamorous relationships before, actually."

"That's- information," Shane says dumbly. Sara laughs at him, shakes her head. "I- Would you be interested in a polyamorous relationship with me and Ryan?"

"Yes," Sara answers without hesitation. "Absolutely." She was just waiting, Shane realizes. All this time, she was just waiting for him to be ready.

Shane buys Ryan flowers. It's been almost a week of waiting, so Shane thinks he deserves at  _ least  _ some flowers. He picks red roses, because he thinks that might do a little bit of the talking for him. He gives them to Ryan in the parking lot of their favorite theater on their weekly Thursday night movie (date).

"Uh," says Ryan, wide-eyed. Shane can feel him tremble a little when he takes hold of the rubber-banded stems.

"Yes," Shane says, and then realizing only after he says it that it won't mean fuck-all by itself, "I mean, yes I've considered polyamory, uh, right after you asked I mean, and then Sara and I considered it together, and we- together- considered: yes. God, I hope you asked because you were interested and I'm not making an absolute fool of myself  _ and  _ Sara right now,  _ please-" _

Ryan is laughing, clutching the roses to his chest with his head thrown back laughing. Shane can't help but smile in the face of Ryan's joy, contagious in its beauty. He smiles much harder though, when Ryan catches his breath and presses in close and stands up on his tippy-toes to give Shane a chaste but achingly sweet kiss.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I asked because I'm interested."

"Oh," Shane mumbles, leaning down for more kisses. "Good."

They decide to skip the movie this week, and go home to Sara instead. Together.

Sex and love between three people is a completely different horizon, stretching out into a brand new vanishing point. Shane's excited to set out and find some treasure.


End file.
